Colorado River Update
Negotiations over Colorado River water supplies are historically tumultuous and as of recent weeks that trend continues, creating significant uncertainty over allocations going forward. Circumstances of past and present demonstrate significant challenges from drought and overuse, threatening the ability of Colorado River supplies from reaching its natural discharge into the Gulf of California, otherwise known as the Sea of Cortez to which Mexico has water rights. 2026 was negotiated a few years ago for developing a more long-term framework for management guidelines. Seven states claim 15 million acre-feet (MAF) annually, while actual flow averages approximately 12.5 MAF since 2000.
The Colorado River is a 1,450-mile-long river that flows from the Rocky Mountains through seven U.S. states and into Mexico. The river is a critical water supply source for 40 million people. Stakeholders range from tribes, municipal and domestic uses, agriculture, and ecosystems. Thirty federally-recognized Tribal Nations are involved as well as approximately 5.5 million acres of farmland. Some habitats in the ecosystem include native species that are not known to exist anywhere else on Earth.
Its name translates from Spanish to “colored reddish”, purportedly due to the river’s high silt content, a characteristic that contributed to the formation of the Grand Canyon. Given federal, state, tribal jurisdictional topics, the identification, implementation, and enforcement of rights is fiercely complex on the Colorado River. Despite those complexities, the body of legal authorities governing the river is commonly referred to as the Law of the River. The “Law of the River” is a collection of federal laws, interstate compacts, court decrees, treaties, and contracts that dictate the complex allocation of Colorado River water to the Colorado River Basin states (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico) and Mexico. Key components include the 1922 Colorado River Compact, the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act, the 1944 U.S.-Mexico Treaty, and the 1963 Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. California (373 U.S. 546), which together determine which entities receive how much water from the river system.
The importance is massive and obvious. The outcomes are uncertain. Critical for avoiding or at least limiting long, costly, and uncertain legal disputes is ensuring open communication to try to limit misperceptions or misunderstandings, coupled with doubling down efforts to identify negotiated allocations with creative solutions and methodologies as described above. If negotiations fail, the federal government will likely step in and impose management rules of its own.